Time Period: The Years 1102 – 1106 of the Imperial Calendar.
Ages: Aanya (11 to 15), Veer (14 to 18).
Time is a cruel architect. It builds walls between people, brick by silent brick, until the person on the other side is no longer a face, but a memory.
Four years passed.
In the Kingdom of Aethelgard, four years was enough time for a dynasty to crumble, for a river to change its course, and for two children to become strangers.
Part 1: The Ghost of the Gutters (Veer)
Veer was no longer the boy who slipped in the mud.
At fourteen, he had learned that anger was a useless fuel. Anger made you loud. Anger made you clumsy. To survive the slums, you needed to be cold.
He sat on the high beam of the Clock Tower overlooking the Central Market. The wind whipped his hair—longer now, tied back with a rough piece of twine—away from his face. His jaw had sharpened. The baby fat was gone, replaced by the lean, ropy muscle of a predator who lived on adrenaline and stale bread.
Below him, a fat merchant in velvet robes waddled through the crowd, flanked by two guards.
"Too easy," Veer whispered.
He didn't just see a man; he saw a walking puzzle.
Guard on the left has a limp. Guard on the right is distracted by the tavern wench. The purse is on the merchant's right hip, held by a simple leather knot.
Veer dropped.
He didn't use a ladder. He used the gargoyles, swinging from stone to stone with a grace that bordered on suicidal. He hit the ground in a crouch behind a fruit stall, blending instantly into the flow of the crowd.
He moved like water. He brushed past the guard on the right just as a cart blocked the view.
Bump. Slice. Catch.
It took less than a second. A small, sharpened piece of slate in Veer's palm cut the leather string. The heavy purse fell—not into the mud, but into Veer's waiting hand.
By the time the merchant took his next step, Veer was already three stalls away, admiring a display of fish.
"Thief! My purse!" The scream erupted behind him.
Veer didn't run. Running attracted attention. He simply walked, his posture hunched, looking like just another tired laborer. He turned a corner, slipped into an alley, and vanished.
Later, in the safety of his new hideout—a small, abandoned cellar beneath a tannery—Veer emptied the purse.
Seven silver coins. Twenty coppers.
It was a fortune. It was enough to eat well for a month.
But Veer didn't smile. He stared at the silver coins, watching the candlelight dance on the metal.
Seven silver coins.
The Alchemist charges fifty gold coins for the scar cream, he thought. The admission to the Royal Academy is five hundred gold coins. A house in the Merchant District is two thousand.
He did the math in his head. At this rate, stealing purses, it would take him three lifetimes to buy his way into Aanya's world.
He swept the coins into a jar buried in the dirt floor.
"Not enough," he muttered, his voice dropping an octave, cracking with the onset of manhood.
He wasn't stealing for hunger anymore. He was stealing for a war chest. He didn't know how, or when, but he swore he would have enough gold to kick down Kael's front door and buy Aanya's freedom.
He picked up a long, rusted iron rod he had found in a scrap heap. He began to practice swinging it, the metal humming through the air. Whoosh. Whoosh.
He practiced until his hands bled. He practiced until the memory of the guard's club hitting his shoulder faded into a dull ache.
He was becoming a legend in the Lower District. They didn't call him Veer anymore. They called him "The Shadow."
But every night, before he slept, the Shadow looked north, toward the Merchant District. And for a fleeting moment, he was just a boy missing his friend.
Part 2: The Girl Behind the Veil (Aanya)
If Veer was expanding his world, Aanya's world was shrinking.
At eleven, the bandages came off.
At twelve, the mirrors remained covered.
At thirteen, she stopped asking to go outside.
At fifteen, she became a rumor in her own house.
Her room had changed. It was no longer a nursery. It was a library, a sewing room, and a prison.
The scar on the right side of her face had settled. It was no longer a raw wound, but a landscape of raised, twisted tissue. It was pink and white, shiny and textured, pulling the corner of her right eye slightly downward and marring the curve of her cheek.
To her parents, it was a tragedy. To Aanya, it was just... her.
She sat by the window—still nailed shut, though the glass was now exposed to let in light. She was sewing a piece of embroidery. Her fingers, long and elegant, moved with a dexterity that rivaled a surgeon's.
"Aanya?"
The door opened. It was Riya.
Riya was twelve now. And she was everything Aanya was supposed to be. Riya's skin was flawless, glowing with health. She wore a dress of yellow silk that cost more than Veer made in a year.
"What is it, Riya?" Aanya asked, not turning around. She kept her face angled toward the wall, her left profile—the "perfect" side—facing her sister.
"Mother says you must come down," Riya said, twirling a lock of hair. Riya loved Aanya, but she also pitied her, and that pity had slowly curdled into a strange sense of superiority. "The dressmaker is here. He needs to measure you for the... hiding clothes."
"The veils," Aanya corrected softly.
"Yes. And Father is angry. He says you are wasting daylight."
Aanya sighed. She stood up. She reached for a piece of sheer white cloth lying on her vanity and draped it over her head, obscuring the right side of her face.
She walked past the covered mirror. She didn't need to see herself. She knew what she was.
A monster, her mother had whispered once when she thought Aanya was asleep.
A bad investment, her father had grumbled over his ledger.
Aanya walked downstairs. The house was bright, filled with sunlight that felt alien to her skin.
In the parlor, the dressmaker, a flamboyant man named Pierre, was waiting.
"Ah, the elder daughter," Pierre said, his smile faltering slightly as he saw the veil. "Mademoiselle. Please, step onto the podium."
Aanya stepped up. She felt like a mannequin.
"We need high collars," Elara instructed, hovering nearby like a hawk. "And hoods. Deep hoods. The fabric must be breathable but opaque. She cannot be seen in the garden without it."
"Of course, Madam," Pierre mumbled, measuring Aanya's waist. "She has a lovely figure, at least. Very... graceful."
"Her figure is useless if her face frightens the horses," Kael muttered from his armchair, not looking up from his wine.
Aanya stood still. She was fifteen. Her heart was beating, her blood was flowing, her mind was full of poems and songs she had read in her solitude. But to them, she was just a broken vase they were trying to glue back together.
She looked out the parlor window. Through the sheer fabric of her veil, the world looked hazy and dreamlike.
She saw the garden wall. The oak tree.
She remembered a boy falling into the hydrangeas. She remembered a voice screaming her name in the rain.
Veer.
She wondered if he was dead. The guards had beaten him badly. Her father had said he was "disposed of."
He probably forgot me, Aanya thought, a dull ache settling in her chest. Who would remember a scar?
"Stand still!" Elara snapped. "You are trembling."
"I'm sorry, Mother."
Part 3: The Intersection
The seasons turned. It was the winter of 1106. Aanya was approaching sixteen. The fateful year of the Emperor's Selection was drawing close.
One evening, the Kael family carriage was returning from a temple visit. It was a rare excursion, done only because the astrologer insisted Aanya pray to the Goddess of Healing.
Aanya sat in the carriage, heavy velvet curtains drawn tight. She wore a thick cloak with a hood that shadowed her entire face.
The carriage rattled through the heavy snow of the main street. Suddenly, it lurched to a halt.
"What is it?" Kael demanded, banging on the roof.
"A fallen cart, sir!" the driver shouted. "The road is blocked. We must wait."
Aanya sat in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the city. The shouting, the wheels turning, the life she was forbidden to touch.
Curiosity, that old, dangerous friend, nudged her.
With a trembling hand, she pulled the velvet curtain back just an inch.
The cold air bit her skin. She looked out.
They were stuck near the edge of the Market District. The streetlamps were flickering.
Standing under a lamp post, leaning against the wood with a casual, dangerous grace, was a young man.
He was tall. He wore a heavy coat made of patched wolf fur. A long iron rod was strapped to his back. He was eating an apple, slicing pieces off with a knife that glinted in the light.
Aanya's breath hitched.
His hair was still messy, black as ink. But his face... it was hard. Sharp angles, a scar on his chin, and eyes that looked like amber glass—beautiful, but cold.
Veer.
He was alive. He was right there.
Aanya wanted to scream. She wanted to bang on the glass. She wanted to tear off her veil and shout, I'm here! I haven't forgotten!
But then, she saw it.
A group of city guards walked past him. Veer didn't flinch. He didn't run like the boy of ten. He stared them down. He looked dangerous. He looked like someone who belonged to the night.
And she... she looked down at her silk gloves. She looked at the reflection in the carriage window—a ghost in a hood.
He is a wolf now, she realized. And I am a ghost. If he saw me... he would be horrified.
Shame, hot and suffocating, flooded her veins. She couldn't let him see the scar. Not now. Not when he looked so strong and she felt so broken.
Veer paused. He stopped chewing the apple.
He felt eyes on him. The instinct of a thief.
He turned his head slowly. His amber eyes locked onto the black carriage. He saw the gap in the curtain. He saw a single eye—violet and sad—peering out from the darkness.
Time stopped.
Veer dropped the apple slice.
He took a step forward. The snow crunched under his boot.
"Driver! Move!" Kael shouted from inside.
The cart ahead cleared. The driver whipped the horses. The carriage lurched forward, picking up speed.
The gap in the curtain closed. The violet eye vanished.
Veer stood in the middle of the snowy street, watching the carriage disappear around the bend.
He didn't chase it. He knew he couldn't catch horses on foot in the snow.
He reached up and touched his chest, where his heart was hammering against his ribs.
"Aanya," he whispered. The steam of his breath carried the name away.
She was alive. She was still in that cage.
And for the first time in four years, the ice in Veer's eyes melted, just for a second.
He picked up his apple. He looked at the tracks the carriage had left in the snow.
"Wait for me," he said to the empty street. "Just a little longer."
He turned and walked back into the shadows. He had a job to do. He needed more gold.
The gap was wide. It was an ocean of class, money, and trauma. But Veer had just learned how to swim.